Might it be a good idea to have a word list?

Use this wiki page to add things, eg

Prefixes and Suffixes

-ize/-yze
Change to -ise/-yse. (e.g. synchronise, analyse)
-or
Change to -our. (e.g. colour, neighbour)
-er
Change to -re. (e.g. centre, metre)
-g
Change to -gue. (e.g. Catalogue, dialogue)
-l-
Change to -ll-. (e.g. enrollment, modelling)
-ed
Change to -t. (e.g. leapt, learnt) (This is not always the rule!)

Tense

Simple Past
Some en-US words have no suffix for simple past tense: fit => fitted

Words

Check
Cheque (i.e. bank cheque)
Check [mark]
Tick (i.e. little √ shaped thing)

References

Groups audience: 

Comments

We need a decent style guide, not just a list of suffixes to sort out.

The OED style is probably the sensible choice; many folk in Britain seem to treat it as if it were normative. If it's good enough for Countdown, it should be good enough for Drupal, I reckon. (OED doesn't claim to be normative, as far as I know.)

None of the suffix suggestions above should be treated as strict rules. Try actor, camphor, error, canter, log.

-ize is a particularly tricky issue, which often leads to arguments in pub quizzes. For the vast majority of cases, -ize is perfectly fine for British English, and does not need changing to -ise.

Now I'm gonna duck behind the sofa while people throw things at me. That's what usually happens when I say -ize is fine. Sooner or later someone insists on consulting the OED, and are astonished to find -ize all over the shop:


The verbal ending -ize has been in general use since the 16th century; it is favoured in American English and in much British writing, and remains the current preferred style of Oxford University Press in academic and general books published in Britain. However, the alternative spelling -ise is now widespread (partly under the influence of French), especially in Britain, and may be adopted provided that its use is consistent.
Concise OED 9th ed. (corrected 1998), Style Guide 6.9

So there's no actual ruling one way or the other - the important thing is consistency. (As you'd expect, Cambridge takes a contrary view, favouring -ise.)

Drupal is already using -ize for the US-style, and since the OED lists these as the main entries, I see no reason to migrate to -ise en masse. Some words will need to be changed to -ise, because, as the OED goes on to reveal, things aren't so simple:


A number of verbs always end in -ise in British use, notably advertise, chastise, despise, disguise, franchise, merchandise, surmise, and all verbs ending in -cise, -prise, -vise (including comprise, excise, prise (open), supervise, surprise, televise, etc.), but -ize is always used for prize (=value), capsize, size.
Concise OED 9th ed. (corrected 1998), Style Guide 6.9

In short, most words can have -ize or -ise, but there are exceptions for both.

-yze is a different matter - nuke 'em:


Spellings with -yze (paralyze, analyze) are only acceptable in American use.
Concise OED 9th ed. (corrected 1998), Style Guide 6.9

Phew! Everything's clear now, no?

Had a look to see what Fowler's has to say about -ize. Basically, fully in favour of -ize. Apparently, we stole that from the Greeks, who used a similar ending to make verbs.

There then followed a long list of exceptions...

And a later declaration that "Most verbs in -ize are inelegant."

Clear as mud, I say :)

Well, I already changed a few, but I agree, there are definitely some words that just read better with the z (analyse? wtf?). I reckon that there's probably never going to be any rules that are particularly useful for this. And it's more work in most cases.

By the way, I'm an aussie, and I reckon you poms are just as bad as the yanks :D. In any case, feel free to change everything on the wiki page, I've got no attachment to it, I just have a few grammar-nazi clients, is all.. (ok, ok, I care about it a bit, too. "cheque" just looks so much nicer, and "catalog" looks like it's been kicked in the arse. [does "ass" appear in drupal at all?])

Cheers,
ned

I'm tending to conclude that an en-GB translation of Drupal is futile. Earlier I argued that we should agree upon a British style guide for Drupal, but I no longer feel so strongly about it. What matters more is the client's style guide (or whimsy). Across Britain I've met groups that prefer -ize and as many others that prefer -ise. We could produce an en-GB translation for Drupal, but we would end up having to (un-)do it all over again on a client-by-client basis.

Keep a look out for the most necessary changes, but otherwise it can be left alone.

In Drupal 9 multilanguage sites I'm having critical php error (PHP 8.2 in the error log) when using lang_dropdown Native drupal language selector is working fine, but very hard to css it and make looking nice. Anyone with solution on this please?

The Susan Jones reference provides some poor examples. An American following her suggestions blindly would run into some odd gotchas:

  • Her treatment of draft -> draught only applies to wind, not documents.
  • OED lists aging and medieval as main entries, with her suggestions as variants.
  • Program is typically used when talking about computer instructions, and programme for event of schedules.
  • I can't find her "arguement" spelling in any of my dictionaries. She's just wrong ;-)

P.S.: I'm using The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 9th edition, reprinted with corrections 1998

Absolutely. It's completely shite. But it was a useful starting point. Feel free to remove it, now that the major points are here...

kuroi suggested a bunch of check/tick mark translations. I like it for "tick this box", but I think it looks a bit stupid for "tickbox", maybe just because I'm used to it in webspeak. Maybe "tick-box" would be better? anyone got the OED style guide handy?.

It's generally bad web style to refer explicitly to the low-level components. So 'check this box' shouldn't be there in the original text to translate in the first place; it should be "Select this option", or just "Select to blah blah".
(Same with 'click here' -- never say 'click here'.)

I have some sympathy with this joachim's comment. It does feel a little ugly to be referring explicitly to the low-level components. And I agree that the original text could be better worded.

On the other hand the translator in me (sorry, professionally trained so can get a bit AR on these matters) screams that I should be faithfully conveying the meaning of the original and not correcting, so if it refers to low-level components, then so should the translation.

Guidance from those who have been here for longer than me would be appreciated.

We are dealing here with an open source project made up of thousands of components developed separately. There will be pockets of glaring UI inconsistency, and I would argue that translators are in a very good position to help with this matter as they get a bird's eye view of the UI strings -- and therefore ought to.

Second point is that we're translating International/US English to British English. Let's not go crazy making more work for ourselves! As far as I can tell, the strings for Ubercart are all done. What other major modules have lots of end-user strings?

I think these dodgy strings should be submitted as bugs to the original project, and then translated faithfully. If you don't do this, firstly your translation isn't accurate, and (considering the shortness of the strings, and lack of context) you risk translating wrongly. Secondly, if the original string is fixed, the translation will not work any-more (and also probably wouldn't be needed any-more in most cases). But maybe that's what you're saying.

There's no point searching for modules with lots of strings, since the vast majority of strings won't need translating. Better to search for specific cases, like those above.

I don't have the OED style guide handy, but I do have Swan. Swan's guidance on hyphens in nouns is that they are used "in two-word compound nouns where the first word has the main stress". I don't think that's the case here which implies that this is either a single word or a collocation.

Wikipedia (not the greatest of sources, I know) offers both options. Google also shows both in common usage. My dictionaries, mono- and bi-lingual, offer absolutely nothing for either (which could be interpreted as support for separate words).

Personally, I'm easy, if both are in common usage and the meaning is clear from either, then the main issue is consistency. This would seem to argue therefore for a list of common terms and their treatment. However, joachim also makes a good point ...

A pleasant rabbit-hole, this one ;). I don't recall ever seeing the term "tickbox" (with or without hyphen etc) in the context of a web form. Since we are not talking about user-facing terminology but rather something for admins and developers I'd personally stick with "checkbox".

I think an en-GB translation and guide is very valuable; we're a UK client and inclined to grammar nazism but having a basic translation which we can then tweak for our own needs saves us a huge amount of work; and the guide helps in decision making. Cascading languages anyone?

In Drupal 9 multilanguage sites I'm having critical php error (PHP 8.2 in the error log) when using lang_dropdown Native drupal language selector is working fine, but very hard to css it and make looking nice. Anyone with solution on this please?